


The Gift of Tears

by stargatefan_archivist



Category: Stargate SG-1
Genre: Angst, Friendship, Gen, Hurt/Comfort
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2007-01-09
Updated: 2007-01-09
Packaged: 2018-12-17 17:28:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 15,529
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11856273
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/stargatefan_archivist/pseuds/stargatefan_archivist
Summary: Set very early in Season One, Jack thinks he has a handle on Daniel's grief, and finds, to his dismay, he has only the smallest inkling.





	The Gift of Tears

**Author's Note:**

> Note from Yuma, the archivist: this work was originally archived at [Stargatefan.com](http://fanlore.org/wiki/Stargatefan.com). To preserve the archive, we began manually importing its works to the AO3 as an Open Doors-approved project in 2017. I e-mailed all creators about the move and posted announcements, but may not have reached everyone. If you are (or know) this creator, please contact me using the e-mail address on [StargateFan Archive Collection profile](http://archiveofourown.org/collections/StargateFan_Archive_Collection).

The Gift of Tears

“Well, Dr. Jackson?” Captain Janet Fraiser, Stargate Command’s Chief Medical Officer pocketed her pen, pulled the clip board to her chest and turned her steady gaze on her patient. She’d made a mental note after SG-1’s last post mission physicals, to monitor the lavendar half moon crescents underscoring those blue eyes.

For a moment Daniel Jackson merely stared back, then with a blink and a shake, as if her words had only just registered, the shaggy, dark-blond head cocked appraisingly, but there was no reply. 

Dr. Fraiser waited.

“Am I done?” he inquired finally.

“Why aren’t you sleeping?” Instead of wrapping across his chest, as she had become accustomed to seeing, the long-fingered hands wrapped around the edge of the bed so tightly his knuckles went white. And that, Dr. Fraiser knew, was a difficult thing to accomplish given the pliability of the mattress. 

This young man was way too tense. 

He blinked at her, blinked again, and dropped his gaze to his booted feet propped on the lowered bed railing. As if of their own volition, the arms crept up over his chest, fingers tightening over the sleeves of the too-large BDU jacket. “I’m fine. You just said everything’s normal. Can I go?” The lean jaw clenched tight. “They’re probably waiting for me by now.” 

“I said all your test results are normal. This –” Dr. Fraiser lightly tapped a white-knuckled finger with her pen. “This is not normal. What’s up with you?”

“Nothing.” His gaze slid back up with just a touch of defiance.

Confrontation on any issue regarding Jackson’s personal life was usually met with retreat; a coping mechanism Dr. Fraiser guessed had been in place for a very long time. She knew a little of his history and while there was a measure of understanding, she had no qualms about grounding him if he was a liability to himself or his team. 

But because Janet Fraiser was an excellent and compassionate physician, she also saw the cost to him and tried to soften her tone. “I said your test results were normal,” she repeated. “I did not say you were fine and I can’t release you for Gate travel in this condition . . .” she trailed off, glancing up as the door to the infirmary swung inward.

“Hey, Doc? What’s the hold up?” Colonel Jack O’Neill stiff-armed the door as it swung back at him. “Gate’s open; Carter and Teal’c are waiting. Come on, Dr. Jackson, get the lead out!”

“Colonel, you’ll have to postpone the mission, or get another fourth today. Dr. Jackson won’t be going.” Dr. Fraiser registered a shocked gasp from the occupant of the bed and a surprised ‘what’ from the patient’s C.O. “You heard me correctly, Colonel. Dr. Jackson won’t be going.” She gripped the edge of the curtain and gave it a tug. “You, young man, may get undressed and get into bed.”

“What?!” “Doc?” The pair chimed simultaneously.

“Captain?” Colonel O’Neill prompted. “You want to tell me what the heck is going on here?”

“On issues of medical concern, Colonel, I have ultimate jurisdiction. Dr. Jackson is not fit to be off-world and you will not intimidate me into changing my mind.”

“Oh, for cryin’ out loud!” O’Neill scowled. “I’m not questioning your decisions, but I heard you tell Daniel all his results were normal. Now you’re telling me I can’t have him and telling him to get in bed? Why?”

Between them, Daniel closed his eyes. “She thinks I’m not sleeping.” 

“And? So? What else is new? He hasn’t slept since Sha’re was taken.”

Dr. Fraiser blinked at the tall, unsmiling Colonel. “Sir.” She made an effort to choose her words carefully. “The human body can’t survive without sleep, but if what you say is even remotely true, all the more reason I would be criminally negligent if I cleared Dr. Jackson for Gate travel.”

“Does this look like a man you want to deprive of Gate travel?” The Colonel tapped their civilian archeologist on the shoulder. “Do you want him to go Postal on us, Doc? The sooner we find his wife, the sooner he’s going to sleep. So how ‘bout it? Let me have him today and as soon as we’re back, I promise I’ll march him right back down here and you can wave you magic wand over him to make him sleep. In the meantime, I’ll take personal responsibility for him.” 

“Do you have any idea how much sleep deprivation slows your response time, sir? The time it takes him to draw his weapon could be compromised worse than if he were intoxicated! He’s a liability to you in the field and he’s not going off-world in this condition.”

“Yeah, well, have to tell you, Doc, we don’t really rely on Daniel to be much of a weapons expert in the field,” the Colonel drawled. “He does other important stuff for us, like chatting up the natives and figuring out what all those tiny little squiggles mean _before_ we blow ourselves up. Those kinda things don’t usually require response time, if you know what I mean.”

Dr. Fraiser sighed inwardly. O’Neill was military through and through, but something about this band of waifs he led had skewed his perspective just enough to soften some of his hard edges. When it didn’t interfere with her job, she thought this was a good thing; today it just exasperated her. 

It had been born in on her, very early on, there was no fall back in this job. The smallest oversight or misdiagnosis could have far reaching consequences and she had nothing to go on but instinct. 

A month ago SG-1 had brought home an alien virus – an _alien_ virus – one that spread like wildfire through the SGC. O’Neill had tried to rearrange Jackson’s face while under its influence. Captain Carter had attacked her commanding officer as if he were a prime candidate for her breeding program. 

Although Dr. Jackson had seemed at first to have some kind of immunity, he, too, had succumbed while lost on the dark side of P3X 797. Out of the entire base personnel only the Jaffa, Teal’c, whose symbiote protected him, and Dr. Fraiser herself, had remained symptom free. The key to solving the seemingly unsolvable puzzle had been her own immunity in combination with Dr. Jackson’s initial resistance, and ultimately, the correlation of massive doses of antihistamines. 

There was no mystery to solve here; her patient was suffering from sleep deprivation. She knew he was worried sick about his wife and brother-in-law, but even if O’Neill was exaggerating wildly, to have gone two months without the rejuvenating effects of slumber? Just imagining the things that could have gone wrong had her pushing back the envelope of disquiet she’d lived with since acquiring this job. How could she have missed something so blatant? How in the world could she have let him continue traveling through the Gate in this condition? And how could she possibly help him deal with the psychological effects of having his alien wife kidnapped by another alien posing as a god! 

With a shake of her head, Dr. Fraiser centered herself and turned a pointed glare on the Colonel. “He is not going off-world in this condition.” 

“Come on, Doc.” That gentleman offered his rather charming smile to sugarcoat his next words. “He’s not gonna sleep here unless you drug him and he’s gonna fight you tooth and nail on that, so you may as well let him go with us. I swear, as soon as we’re back I’ll put him straight to bed and sing him lullabies if I have to. I need him today.” 

Fraiser watched as O’Neill snagged the linguist by the back of the jacket and yanked, encouraging Dr. Jackson to facilitate his plan by rising. It didn’t help when the young man stumbled as he rose. 

The Colonel jerked him back on his feet, keeping his own gaze focused on the CMO, his smile fixed and pleasant, while clearly trying not to hiss at Jackson who was frowning over his shoulder.

Dr. Fraiser swallowed a smile of her own. “No.” She could do the broken record endlessly if necessary.

“Captain,” O’Neill sighed impatiently, “we’re headed to a place we know is inhabited. It’s imperative we have Daniel this trip out.”

Like a tennis match referee the linguist turned his head toward the physician.

Who sighed as well. “No, Colonel.” Dr. Fraiser stood her ground. “I would be responsible if I let you take him off-world and anything happened to any of you.”

“But, Doc –”

Doctor Fraiser re-crossed her arms over the chart she held against her chest, enduring the hard-eyed stare without flinching. It was her job to protect the men and women of Stargate Command, and protect them she would, even from themselves when necessary.

O’Neill sighed again. “Then we’ll have to postpone the mission. I’m not going without Daniel. And I may as well take him home and put him to bed rather than making him stay here. Not that he’s going to sleep either place,” he muttered under his breath. “I’m sure you don’t want the rest of SG-1 cluttering up your infirmary and if you make him stay we’re just gonna come down here and keep him company. So can I have him?”

“I promise you, Colonel, he >i>will be sleeping. It won’t be necessary for any of you to keep him company.”

“Not the point, Doc. And isn’t it against that hypocritical oath thingy to drug a patient against their will? You might be able to put him to sleep, but it won’t do any good.” O’Neill slid his earpiece in place and palmed the radio clipped to his vest. “Carter? Teal’c? Tell ‘em to shut down the Gate, we’re not going anywhere. Then report to the infirmary.” He flipped the earpiece out again, not bothering to wait for a reply. 

“Dr. Jackson, will you please let me help you?” 

The object of their discussion ducked his head and his arms tightened around himself. “There’s nothing you can do to help, Dr. Fraiser. Jack’s right, it won’t do any good to drug me, I’ll just have nightmares. And then I won’t be able to wake up from them.”

“You know, I can treat some of the symptoms of this. Medication would help your depression at the very least.”

The archeologist snorted. “Oh yeah right,” he quoted his mentor, matching the Colonel’s inflection and emphasis as if they were twins. “Drugs might treat it; finding my wife and brother-in-law would cure it in a heartbeat.”

Dr. Fraiser tilted her head appraisingly. “In the few short weeks I’ve known you, you’ve lost more weight than you can afford and you’re apparently neither eating or sleeping. That makes you a liability to your team. Your whole body reacts negatively to stress like this. I –”

“I think he got the subtext, Doc,” Colonel O’Neill interrupted. “No need to ram it down his throat.”

“I want Dr. Jackson to understand the seriousness of the situation. He’s not just endangering his own life, his actions could put all of you in jeopardy. I’m sorry; I won’t allow that to happen.” Dr. Fraiser glanced over as the infirmary doors swung open again, admitting the remainder of SG-1.

“What is the issue, O’Neill?” Teal’c inquired, staff weapon clasped in one massive fist.

“You okay, Daniel?” Captain Samantha Carter, MP-5 still slung around her neck, shoved the gun down to her side and reached to pat her teammate’s arm.

“Apparently I’m a terrible liability to your on-going health and wellness, Sam,” Daniel murmured.

“What? Who said that?” Captain Carter glared at their C.O.

O’Neill raised both hands. “Wasn’t me.”

Carter turned her glare on the petite physician. “Why? And why would you tell him that?” she demanded.

Dr. Fraiser had found herself drawn to this particular waif as well, so she understood their defensiveness; however, her imperative as C.M.O. was to visualize the bigger picture and that picture loudly and clearly stated this young man was an accident waiting to happen. She would never be able to forgive herself if a decision of hers precipitated that fate.

“I didn’t mean anything derogatory by it, Captain,” she assured, keeping it formal under the circumstances. The two women had become good friends in the short time Dr. Fraiser had been on base, bonding over alien fashions, broken engagements and the discovery that they shared many synchronous views of their Air Force service. “I’m not denigrating Dr. Jackson’s skills, or his commitment to the team, but I cannot allow anyone as sleep deprived as he is to compromise himself or others. Gate travel is hazardous enough without adding more complications.” She turned back to the team leader. “Against my better judgment, I’ll let you take him home this time, Colonel. And, I will inform General Hammond I’ve put your team on stand down until Monday morning.” Fraiser switched her glare to the linguist. “But if you don’t come in here looking rested and better fed when I see you again, there will be serious repercussions, Dr. Jackson.”

The diminutive Napoleonic power monger, as Jack had nicknamed her, was right and Daniel knew it. “Yes, ma’am,” he acknowledged on a sigh. While he was thankful for the reprieve on one level, on another he was relatively certain it was only postponing the inevitable, in which case he might as well surrender now and get it over with. 

Sleep, when caffeine could no longer keep it at bay, was populated with images of his beautiful Abydonian wife as the bride of Apophis, ornamented and adorned as befitted a queen. She’d looked at him with such disdain, such hauteur, that for an instant, he’d been devastated with the certainty Teal’c was right – there could be nothing left of the host. 

His own soul, entwined as it was with Sha’re’s, had twisted agonizingly with the subconscious acceptance. But it had been a momentary thing, his resolve broken and reformed in the blink of an eye with the obdurate conscious choice to believe the Jaffa was wrong. Sha’re was strong, she would never tamely submit to the Goa’uld. She would fight to the death and he could do no less.

“Maybe –” Daniel began, stopping short when the hand on his shoulder squeezed imperatively. 

“Maybe we should go before the Doc changes her mind,” Jack asserted, jerking his head toward the door. “I suppose we could all benefit from a few days downtime.”

Captain Carter unclipped her MP-5. “I have plenty of things I can work on in my lab, sir. I’ve wanted to run some tests on the material the Stargate seems to be composed of, now would be the perfect time. Teal’c, want me to take your staff weapon back to the armory?”

“I will accompany you, Captain Carter.”

“I’ll let the General know the two of you will be leaving the base shortly and the team is on stand down,” Dr. Fraiser informed O’Neill, sliding the curtain back against the wall.

”Thanks, Doc. Come on, Danny, let’s go change.”

“Stop by on your way out, I’ll scrounge up some sleeping medication that might be strong enough to stop the nightmares, okay?”

“I’ll make sure he comes back by.” O’Neill gave her a two-fingered salute and snatched another fistful of too-large BDU jacket when the archeologist swayed alarmingly. 

“I’ll have the meds ready.” Dr. Fraiser watched as the Colonel towed the archeologist toward the exit, the rest of his team following in their wake.

“We’re not doing this again, Daniel,” O’Neill stated calmly, as their teammates split off to head for the armory. “Fraiser’s dead serious; she’s not going to let you offworld if you don’t get some sleep. I expect you to come back down here, pick up whatever pills she’s got for you, and take them as necessary.”

There was no doubt Jack was pissed, the hand still clenched in his BDU jacket was propelling him through the corridors toward the locker room with a controlled irritation he could hardly miss. A sudden yank and the slap of speed induced air displacement brought the further recognition that paying attention to his surroundings might be a wise idea under the circumstances. Daniel rebounded off the wall, missing the second racing airman only because Jack still had hold of him. 

“What is the matter with you? You weren’t this flakey before Frasier pronounced you unfit to be offworld.” Jack kicked open the locker room door. “Good grief, Daniel. _Do_ I need to leave you in the infirmary?” He deposited the young man on the bench and jerked open the archeologist’s locker. “Well?” Street clothes were unceremoniously dumped in a heap next to the kid, along with a pair of desert boots. “It’s snowing at the surface; you better wear the boots you have on to go home.”

“Jack, maybe it would be better if I just stay here.” Daniel listlessly fingered the green Henley. 

“Why?” O’Neill opened his own locker, pulling out jeans, a sweatshirt and a pair of scuffed and worn combat boots. His feet had long ago conformed to the shape of the regulation footwear, he rarely wore anything else. 

“Because it will be less trouble for everybody.” Daniel made no move to change. 

“Suit yourself,” Jack mumbled, pulling his regulation black t-shirt over his head. “But wouldn’t you be more comfortable in your own bed at home?”

His own bed? Home? 

His own bed was a pallet he’d shared with Sha’re. Home had been Abydos, the house they’d shared with Kasuf and Skarra in the walled city during the fall and winter and their own tent during the spring and summer migration to the oasis. But in a nightmarish replay of his early years, he no longer had home, though he clung fiercely to the hope that he would again . . . soon, if fate deigned to be kind. 

“Would you rather put up with Frasier’s nurses with big honkin’ needles,” Jack inquired, sitting down to exchange his boots, “or me?”

“She said pills.”

“If you go home. Why do it the hard way if you’re in the infirmary where she can monitor you? I guarantee she’ll mainline those drugs straight into a vein if only to keep you docile.” Jack grinned and punched the archeologist lightly on the shoulder. “Come on, you know you don’t want to stay here.”

“No, I don’t,” Daniel admitted.

“Then don’t.” Jack pulled on his ski jacket and slammed his locker shut. “I’m going to get the truck. I’ll meet you at the surface. And, Daniel? Don’t get sidetracked. You’re going to the infirmary and then up to the top. No stops at your office on the way. You’re not taking anything home this weekend. You’re planning to spend the entire time eating and sleeping, right?”

Daniel only huffed his annoyance. Really, he didn’t need a keeper. He’d been taking care of himself since he was eight. He’d managed, somehow, to survive to the ripe old age of thirty. Staying with Jack was easy and safe, but he was no longer eight, or even eighteen. Maybe this weekend would be a good time to start looking for a place of his own. 

Jack was smiling as he left the locker room. The kid was such an easy target. Needling him was taking on the proportions of a whole new sport - like alligator wrestling, without the risk of losing a limb. Not that he would ever take it to such lengths; he’d learned what was too far with the archeologist, when it went over the line from play to pain, very quickly. Daniel wasn’t easily offended, but the scars over his multiple wounds were tender and Jack, though he would deny it with his last breath, was a natural nurturer. 

Daniel went through the motions of changing sluggishly, unconsciously sighing as he pulled on jeans and slid into a button-down shirt, pulling a heavy wool sweater on over top. He was constantly cold here on Earth. Abydos had quickened many of the imprinted memories buried beneath layers of insulation. He’d adjusted swiftly to the desert climate, his body responding to those faint memory patterns stamped into him during his formative years under the hot Egyptian sun. He pulled his coat from the locker and shrugged into it, warm for the first time since he’d gotten out of bed. 

Signing out at the surface, he pulled on his gloves and drew in a deep breath before shoving the door open. The wind caught him the moment he stepped beyond the sheltered portico and tried its best to whip him sideways. He planted his feet and leaned into it, only taking a step forward when he was sure he could combat the forces of nature. _‘No different from a sandstorm,’_ he thought miserably, _‘except for the cold.’_ Which was already seeping into his bones. 

Snow swirled in miniature funnel clouds, dancing like devil dervishes all around him, as he waited for the shuttle bus that would convey him back to the parking lot. Visibility was limited to a yard or two in any direction, but the welcome sweep of headlights cut through the curtain of snow, glancing off him and cutting a path through the flakes like gun sights on an MP-5. He was surprised to find that instead of a fifteen minute cold ride down to the parking lot, a dark green vehicle presented itself at the curb, the passenger door creaking open when he didn’t immediately realize the chauffeured truck had come for him. 

“What? You need an engraved invitation? Get in,” Jack ordered. “You’re letting all the warm air out.”

Daniel stamped his feet on the running board, brushing snow out of his hair and off his clothes before sliding into the seat. “Thanks,” he offered. Thankful indeed he hadn’t had to wait for the school bus shuttle that regularly conveyed them back and forth to the Cheyenne Mountain employee parking lot. Little gifts like this said more than anything coming out of the Colonel’s mouth.

They drove home in silence, Daniel expecting every moment to be the recipient of a well-deserved tongue lashing. While he liked and respected Jack immensely, the man did tend to treat him, occasionally, like a wayward child. He could live with that since he’d discovered, under the turtle shell hardness, Jack O’Neill was a man well worth the effort of getting to know. He appreciated Jack’s unfailing optimism; it called to the kernel of optimism the universe had never quite managed to snuff out of him, despite repeated tries. He enjoyed matching wits with the acerbic, tongue-in-cheek, occasionally irascible Colonel, and had found, unexpectedly, a chess partner that could actually make him sweat. 

Right now, though, he was too tired to worry any longer about whether O’Neill was going to tear him a new one for causing them to have to postpone the mission. He leaned his head against the window and zoned for the ride home.

Colonel O’Neill was busily making his list and checking it twice as he hustled the drooping archeologist from the garage into the house. He nudged the thermostat up several degrees on their way past, having turned it down expecting to be gone the entire weekend. Though well insulated, the house had cooled considerably.

“Here’s what I’m thinking.” He clapped his friend on the shoulder and steered him toward the kitchen, hoping Daniel wouldn’t realize it was deliberate. “Lunch and then maybe the combination of Fraiser’s pills and a hot bath would relax you enough to let you sleep for awhile. Will you at least give it a try?”

In theory it sounded good, though Daniel doubted there was any possibility of restful sleep. It wasn’t something he was actively fighting . . . at least not very hard anymore. “Sure,” he sighed, sinking down at the table, unconsciously giving over autonomy to his C.O. 

A half glass of wine and the sleeping pills were placed in front of him. 

“Just to give it a head start,” Jack offered. “Under any other circumstances I wouldn’t encourage you to mix alcohol and medications, but I think in this instance it won’t hurt you.”

Obediently, Daniel downed the pills with the wine, slumping over the table to rest his head on his arms. With nothing requiring his immediate attention, nothing to focus on to keep the weariness at bay, exhaustion was seeping inexorably through his veins.

Much as he would have liked to get food into the kid, Jack figured sleep was definitely the highest priority. He wondered briefly if he should let him sleep sitting here at the table. However, as he didn’t think sleeping at the table was conducive to the kind of rest Fraiser was expecting, he wrapped a hand around the back of Daniel’s neck, squeezing lightly. “Hey, I know my cooking’s not great, but falling asleep before I even get it on the table, now that’s an insult. Come on, if you can’t stay awake long enough for me to feed you, why don’t you head for the tub?” 

Sliding back from the table, Daniel rose and had to grab the back of the chair when the room suddenly tipped and spun crazily. 

“Whoa there.” Jack reached to steady him. “Straight to bed?” 

“No.” Daniel waited for the room to right itself before he let go. “Even with the pills, I won’t sleep long, if I manage to fall asleep. Maybe a shower instead of a bath though.”

Jack didn’t argue, just kept a guiding hand in the small of Daniel’s back as he steered him to the back bathroom with the larger tub. “I’ll run the water; you take care of getting undressed.”

“Jack –”

“Daniel, you’re big enough I’m not gonna worry about you drowning if you fall asleep in the tub. On the other hand, I’m not so sure you can stay on your feet in the shower. So if you don’t want me keeping you company the entire time, you’ll settle for the tub.”

“Fine. Whatever.” Daniel pulled the sweater over his head and tossed it in the corner, willing his suddenly trembling fingers to stillness as he popped the first button on his shirt. Too tired his brain flashed . . . incapable . . . no longer . . . connecting . . . synapses . . . his hands dropped like stones. He tried to force them back up to the buttons, made a valiant effort to push back the blackness, but overwhelming exhaustion crashed down on him like a ton of bricks. “Jack . . .”

“Oh, for cryin’ out loud!” Jack, kneeling beside the tub, glanced over his shoulder at the sound of his name and had to lunge to keep the archeologist from slamming his head into the counter. “Dammit, Daniel, in the future I need a little more warning.” 

He eased the younger man down on the floor in a recovery position and checked his pulse. Slow and steady. That was good at least. He wondered briefly if he should call Fraiser, decided not, since she would almost certainly demand he bring Daniel back into the Mountain and he was equally certain it would do the kid no good to be in the infirmary. 

He was glad, though, Fraiser had insisted they postpone the mission. If Daniel had collapsed on them off-world, nobody would have been happy; least of all, the archeologist. 

Sighing, Jack laid a hand on the cool cheek. The tub was still better; he didn’t think unconscious equaled relaxed. And while he couldn’t open a vein and drain the tension out of said archeologist, he did think the combination of heat and drugs and alcohol might do the trick. 

So, instead of trying to rouse him, Jack let the tub fill while he stepped over his unconscious friend to pull towels out of the linen closet. Finding some emergency candles in the back, he pulled those out too and set them on the counter. He had to rummage for matches, but eventually found a matchbook from O’Malley’s and lit the candles. 

The scent of chlorine and warm wax tickled his nose as he bent over his friend once more. 

Daniel murmured something unintelligible and curled into a tighter ball, arms wrapping tightly over his chest in that ever present self-hug. 

“Come on, you need to wake up long enough to get in the tub.” Jack patted him lightly on the cheek and was rewarded with fluttering eyelids. “That’s good; let’s see those baby blues. There ya go; knew you could do it. Come on, sit up and let me help you out of these clothes.” 

Eventually, with much coaxing and cajoling, Jack got his out-on-his-feet burden undressed and into the tub, where Daniel immediately slid down to chin depth, knees bent to accommodate his height, and promptly fell asleep. 

_Working like a charm,_ Jack reflected, dousing the overhead lights as he mentally checked the next stop on his to-do list; bedroom where he turned on the electric blanket to warm up the bed, then headed back to the kitchen to make some lunch. 

This operation required precise timing. Leave the archeologist in too long and the water would cool; pull him out too quickly and the beneficial effects could be nullified. 

Jack spent a few minutes, while eating himself, clearing growing things out of the fridge, and trying to remember the last time he’d been grocery shopping. It was often easier with only a few days between missions, to stay on base, especially with all the prep work both Daniel and Carter were doing to familiarize them with where they were going. 

The final thing on his to-do list, warm milk, might be a problem. Fortunately, a sniff at the container was enough to assure the milk hadn’t gone sour. He’d rather not add more caffeine to the mix, but if the archeologist refused the milk, he could always add chocolate. 

By this time of day, Daniel was usually on his seventh or eighth cup of coffee. Jack had been surprised the stimulant still worked, considering the kid’s habitually abusive use.

He was determined to get the linguist to sleep, and soundly, if he had to sing him lullabies and rub his back as he’d offered Fraiser. They’d done the borrow-another-linguist thing once already, when Daniel hadn’t been recovered enough to accompany them on the next mission after an off-world accident. Jack had no intention of doing it again. 

He shoved the mug of milk in the microwave, set the timer, and went back to check on his charge. 

Daniel had settled a little lower in the tub, but was in no danger of drowning, and seemed to be sleeping peacefully. No rapid eye movement, no tiny tremors twitching the shoulders; the water was undisturbed, which likely meant Daniel was undisturbed as well. 

Sweet. With any luck this job was going to be easier than he’d imagined. Maybe it was the whole returning to the womb thing; being in the water, wrapped in near darkness, with only the candles and their reflection for illumination. 

Maybe he should consider putting the archeologist to bed in the tub every night.

Whatever it was, Daniel appeared more relaxed than Jack had seen him since first stepping back through the Abydos Gate. Even in his excitement over the map room, and sharing with folks like Carter who understood the significance of it, he’d still exuded peacefulness, a tranquility that had spoken eloquently of deeply entrenched roots of hearth and home.

Jack had left behind a shy, rather diffident scholar, and come back to find a man in charge of a militia, who’d unburied the Stargate expecting the Earth contingent to come looking for him and even welcoming it.

Except in the space between one heartbeat and the next, excitement had been ravaged, and another blow struck in Daniel Jackson’s tragic young life. 

Jack was well aware the oblivious base heartthrob wasn’t nearly as young as he looked. According to his file, Daniel had turned thirty while on Abydos. He was not a kid, despite the fact he still looked barely old enough to be out of school. It had been both a bane and a blessing on some of their trips through the Gate. Daniel could get away with shit none of the rest of them would have considered attempting. On the other hand, it had kept them out of a few places Daniel had been dying to investigate. 

After one such encounter, Jack had overheard the science twins chattering about trying to age themselves with the nanocyte technology. While amused, he’d immediately put a stop to the conversation with a lighthearted, but decisive, “Don’t even go there, kids.”

Carter and Daniel had both glanced up in surprise. Their conversation had been conspiratorially whispered. Jack had only raised an eyebrow and gone back to his MRE. He had nothing to prove, but he was glad to have them aware very little, if anything, went on without his noticing. 

Teal’c, when O’Neill glanced up again, had inclined his head in acknowledgement, allowing the merest glimmer of amusement to enter the dark eyes before returning to his own sustenance.

Shaking off the memories, interesting ones now to layer over the wallpaper of ugliness he’d lived with for much of his special ops career, Jack went to retrieve the cup. He took it to the sink to skim off the layer of cooked milk on the surface, knowing from several midnight sessions where he’d exchanged Daniel’s coffee for hot chocolate, the archeologist turned up his nose at the dense, coagulated milk. 

Before he realized what he’d done, Jack had added chocolate syrup. He just shook his head. Yeah, so Daniel had gotten under his skin in a way he let few people do; so what if the kid reminded him a little of Charlie. Who’d ever know if he automatically did the little things he knew Daniel appreciated? 

The sound of splashing water had him depositing the cup hurriedly on the nightstand in the bedroom and quickening his pace down the hall to his own room. 

He stopped short in the bathroom door. 

Daniel, slumped on the closed toilet seat with a towel wrapped around his waist and one arm slung along the counter, had his head down on his arm. Without opening his eyes, he slurred a single word. “Cooked,” adding a nearly incomprehensible, “n’gy.”

“Ahh, no energy is a good thing,” Jack replied, satisfied his plan was working well. “I’ll bring you some sweats.” 

He didn’t want Daniel wandering the cool house in just a towel, the dry heat wicking the moisture from his body and cooling him at the same time. He wanted to keep the archeologist warm and toasty and out of energy. Hopefully that meant no energy for nightmares either.

No energy meant no energy he discovered. It took some finessing to get the kid back into clothes and then maneuver him out of the bathroom back down the hall to the bedroom. 

Daniel flopped down gratefully the moment the backs of his knees encountered the bed. He didn’t feel Jack straighten his uncomfortably bent limbs, never knew the covers were pulled up over his shoulder and lightly tucked in, wasn’t aware of the hand lingering briefly on his forehead, or the quiet benediction spoken over him. 

“If he has to dream, it would be nice if they were pleasant for a change.”

Retiring to the living room, Jack hunted up the remote and turned on the television. The Weather Channel was forecasting snow, snow, snow, and more snow. He’d give it a couple hours, make sure Daniel was past the stage he usually woke with nightmares, and go fight the blizzard conditions to bring in supplies for the weekend. Except the boring fare offered up when he clicked through the rest of the channels quickly lulled him to sleep as well.

He woke with an unusual headache, chased down a couple of aspirin with a bottle of water, and went to check on the archeologist.

Daniel was buried in the nest of covers like a hibernating squirrel, deeply asleep from the sound of his breathing, and still undisturbed. With any luck he’d stay that way at least through the night, though miracles on that scale were about as likely as being raised from the dead by the Nox – a once in a lifetime occurrence.

Retreating quietly, Jack palmed his keys from the hall table, shoved his cell phone in his pocket, and went to the closet for a coat. 

The archeologist was safe in the arms of Morpheus for another hour or two, enough time to make it to the corner grocery store, as long as they weren’t out of milk and toilet paper. With the extended forecast calling for blizzard conditions the entire weekend, it wouldn’t be unusual to find the store stripped to the bare walls of staples; in which case he would have to venture further afield and he wasn’t sure he wanted to be gone that long. 

However, as they’d had no plans to be home and the MRE’s intended for their weekend meals were still in their packs buried now under several feet of snow, as well as the several million tons of rock and steel that was the Mountain, it was either make the trek to the commissary over at Peterson, or find a grocery store that still had supplies. 

Jack was relatively certain the Doc wouldn’t consider canned soup and stale crackers ‘better fed’ any more than she’d consider sleeping at the table ‘rested’. 

He was half way back to the Base before he found a store that still had milk. 

Then the check-out lines were clear to the back of the aisles and the trip home was a nightmare of downed power lines and felled trees, not to mention roads too icy to be driving without chains. He’d been able to follow a sand truck for a good portion of the way, but the all-news station was broadcasting the county trucks couldn’t keep up with the icy conditions, nor could the power company keep up with the power outages happening all over Colorado Springs. 

He’d had to circumnavigate the neighborhood just to get to his own street. At two of the entrances to the subdivision, swarms of neighbors had been busily hacking away with axes and chain saws at large downed trees, one of which had gone over into a home. 

With a groan, Jack flipped the remote back onto the dashboard when the garage door failed to open. He slid the gearshift into neutral and set the parking brake. 

The house was shrouded in a snowy, mid-winter afternoon darkness, the sharp corners and angles softened by the oblique curtain of precipitation that pelted him with stinging needles of ice as he got out of the truck, grabbing several bags of groceries in each hand. 

He won the wrestling match with the wind for the right to close the truck door, but by the time he’d waded through the drifted snow from the driveway to the front door, he was winded too. As he pulled the key out and turned the door knob, the door slammed back against the wall, sucked open by the draft whooshing through the house. 

Jack stood for a moment on the threshold, registering the freezing cold indoor temperature. Even if they’d lost power, the house shouldn’t be this cold; he’d only been gone a few hours. He grabbed the door and shoved it closed behind him. 

Three steps into the hallway he identified the source of the freezing cold chill. 

He dropped the grocery bags on the kitchen table, uncaring what was in them, and strode through the wide open sliding glass doors onto the back deck. “Dammit, Daniel!” He grabbed what felt like an elbow and dragged the blanket-clad figure back into the kitchen, not letting go as he slammed the doors shut and clicked the lock. “What the hell is wrong with you? You got a death wish or something?” Yanking a chair out from the table with his foot, he shoved the unresisting archeologist down on it with enough force to rattle his teeth. “You better be sleep walking or you’re gonna find I can be just as hard-assed as Fraiser about Gate travel.” He snatched a kitchen towel off the counter and swiped at the snow-soaked hair. “How long have you been outside?” 

There was no response and Daniel folded in half on the chair. 

“Oh no!” Jack grabbed him by a handful of ice-shrouded blanket, forcefully propping him back up. “You are so not taking that route outta this, pal.” Wincing as his knees popped painfully, the Colonel dropped to his heels without letting go of the blanket. “Talk to me, Daniel, now, or I’m pulling the plug until you’ve had a psyche eval.”

As much as he hated the idea of replacing Daniel on the team, even temporarily, in this he was absolutely on board with the C.M.O. If there was even a hint the archeologist was suicidal he wasn’t letting him put a toe through the Gate. Jack had a lot of experience with suicidal maniacs; he knew the profile extremely well, as did Daniel.

If he’d been paying attention, the Colonel realized a moment too late, he’d have been prepared. He’d thought he had a handle on Daniel’s grief, thought he understood how deeply the loss of Sha’re had affected him, until Daniel opened his eyes.

For whatever reason, the barriers the archeologist had successfully managed to keep in place were down. Whether he was too distraught, too grief-stricken, or just plain too exhausted to keep up the facade, Jack recognized he was seeing, for the first time, the true extent of Daniel’s pain. 

It literally rocked him back on his heels. 

Jack knew grief. He’d buried a child; a child that still haunted his own dreams, though the sharpness of that initial grief had dulled finally to an aching sadness. Daniel was balanced precariously on a knife-edge; on one side lay sheer madness, on the other, temporary insanity.

“Another nightmare?” Jack probed tentatively, coaxing rather than commanding. 

Daniel took a shuddering breath, nearly convulsing with the effort of holding back the emotion clawing at him from the inside out. A part of him wanted to howl, to tear at his clothes and run screaming back out into the snow storm so it could swallow him up again, while part of him wanted desperately to reconcile the fierce anger wrapped around a sorrow so wounding it was embedded like a sword plunged deep into his soul. 

“It wasn’t a nightmare,” he rasped, his voice barely a ragged whisper. He pulled the frozen blanket tighter around his shoulders. “I dreamt of Sha’re; but it wasn’t a nightmare.” 

The dam had burst; there would be no holding back the flood it loosed. 

“She’s only nineteen, Jack. She’d barely experienced liberation and now that Goa’uld has enslaved her far worse than before. Now she doesn’t even have control of her own body. She has to live with that . . . that filthy parasite in her brain, and Teal’c says she’ll have all the knowledge of every human Ammonet has ever taken as host. I’m just guessing at what he didn’t say, but that must mean she’s seen hideous things Sha’re would never have been exposed to.” 

The tears came hot and fast, thawing tracks down his chilled cheeks, and Daniel let go of the blanket, bowing his head into his hands. 

“I dreamt of us . . .” he wept inconsolably, uncaring if his tears embarrassed or alarmed his C.O.

_‘Oh, for cryin’ out loud!’_ the irritated Colonel growled inside his own head, _‘I just asked for no nightmares, don’t ya think this was a little over the top?’_ Jack thudded forward on his knees and very gently drew all that raw grief into his arms. 

Daniel had seen an old well being filled once. Anything and everything that could take up space had been pitched into the hole: old rusted car fenders; time-and-exposure-rotted, barbed-wire-wrapped fence posts; rubber tires; parts from an abandoned, out-lived-its-usefulness jungle gym. 

He’d stood watching, rubbing at the ache in his chest, recognizing even at the tender age of eight, the well of humanity his parents had encouraged him to tap in himself was fast filling up with debris. The rigid, impersonal reality of foster care had forced him to close over the gaping wound of the loss, not only of his parents, but his childhood as well, and tattooed several new scars, more hurtful for their deliberate infliction, over top of the barely healed old ones. 

For years after the death of his parents Daniel had thought his well of tears dried up.

It had taken an incident in his early teens, with a small kitten and a sadistic foster brother, to clear the debris from the springs and reopen the well. By that point, he’d stopped caring what people thought of him, stopped worrying about anyone else’s expectations.

He wept for Sha’re now as he hadn’t allowed himself to do; for Skaara; for the double loss his goodfather had suffered; and the loss of the village in two of their brightest stars. He wept for what his wife was experiencing; for the desolation and despair she must be enduring; and for his own misery bottled up for so long in such a poisonous way. He wept until his well of tears was empty again; until his head ached and his chest heaved with the physical aftermath of such agonizing sorrow. 

Daniel became aware, by degrees, of his physical condition. He was teeth-chatteringly cold; the only warm spots on his body – and it took him awhile to identify these – were the back of his neck where Jack’s hand rested, and his cheek against Jack’s shoulder. It was awhile more before he thawed enough to realize Jack’s other hand was soothing up and down his arm. 

The hand clasped warmly around the back of his neck remained, as though glued in place, when the linguist finally gathered up the tattered remnants of what dignity he still aspired too. He sat up slowly, Jack’s hand anchoring him to the chair. “I don’t want to go back to bed.”

A very slight smile twitched at the corner of the Colonel’s mouth. There was a lot of kid in Daniel still, despite the fact he was thirty-something, married to an alien, and had lived on another planet. “I’m not your father, Daniel. I’m not going to make you go back to bed. However, I am the guy you travel through the Gate with, and I am your C.O. Ahht!” Jack put up a finger. “I don’t care what you want to call it, okay? And this isn’t the appropriate time or place to get into that. You’re freezing and I left the truck running in the driveway. Right now, are you capable of getting back to the bathroom on your own or do you need help? And don’t tell me what you think I want to hear.” 

Daniel looked down at his bare, frozen toes, resting in a puddle of icy water where the blanket had begun to thaw and drip. “I’m not fragile. I can make it to the bathroom.”

Jack stifled a groan as he rose, both knees protesting their long, undesired contact with the cold, hard floor. “No crawling.” The linguist was one of the least fragile people he’d ever encountered, but the Colonel had been a student of human nature long enough to know everyone had their breaking point.

Daniel sighed wearily. He’d forgotten what a knack Jack had for reading people. “Even part of the way?”

Jack let the smile out, though it was rueful. “Come on.” He slid a hand under Daniel’s elbow and levered him up. “Leave the blanket, would ya, I’ll get you a dry one if you absolutely have to have one, Linus.” He steered the hobbling linguist out of the kitchen and down the hall.

“Linus? Do I know Linus?”

“You led such a deprived childhood. Don’t you even read the comics now? Charlie Brown? Snoopy? Linus?”

“My head’s spinning, Jack. Is this a need-to-know kinda thing?”

“Right.” He deposited his teammate on the toilet seat and started warm water. “Give me your hands.” Jack turned back and held out both his own, palms up.

“Why?” Daniel shoved at his dripping hair.

“Well, let’s see. You were out on the deck, barefoot, in a freakin’ blizzard, for who knows how long. I want to make sure you don’t have frostbite.”

They were wet and cold, but even the tips of the fingers were pliable. Finger combing back the soaked hair, Jack checked ears as well, then knelt to check feet and toes. Still on his knees he turned off the water in the tub. 

“I need you to sit here for a minute while I go move the truck and get the groceries inside. You gonna be okay?”

“I’m . . . I’ll be okay.”

“Good, ‘cause I wasn’t buying any of that ‘I’m fine’ crap.” Jack yanked a towel off the rack. “Lift your feet.” 

Daniel obeyed and he slid the towel under them, wrapping it loosely around both feet. 

“Just so you don’t get any ideas and wander off. Lift again.” For good measure he slid the small, oval bathroom rug under, an extra layer of insulation from the cold tile floor. “Back in a flash; don’t go anywhere.”

On his way out to the garage, Jack tossed a blanket he’d collected from the linen closet into the dryer and turned the machine on high. He opened the garage door with the inside switch and moved the truck, piled the bags of groceries on the counter, hunted up the largest pot he could find, and grabbed the semi-warmed blanket out of the dryer.

“All right, just so you know, you may have a little frostbite on your feet, and because we do so much walking, we’re going to do this the right way, not the fast way.” The pot clanged loudly in the small space as the Colonel set it in the tub. While it was filling, he wrapped the blanket around Daniel’s shoulders. “This is straight out of the cold tap,” he said, lifting the pot out of the tub and placing it in front of the towel-clad feet. “It might hurt when you put your feet in because they may still be colder than the water.” 

Daniel hissed as he stuck his right foot, then the left, into the pan. It did hurt, like walking on live coals. And it hurt all over again with each successively warmer pan of water. By the time Jack let him get undressed and into the tub, it felt like a really bad acupuncturist had been practicing on his feet. He hobbled the two steps to get into the tub, grinding his chattering teeth as he slid down into the really hot water and slowly submerged. 

Heaven and hell: heaven because the warmth was lovely and penetrating; hell because the warmth was prickly and penetrating. Every one of his Lever 2000 parts was making him tinglingly aware of their displeasure.

“You’re gonna be in here awhile. I want to be sure you’re thoroughly thawed before you get out. Want something to read?”

Daniel shook his head. “Couldn’t concentrate.” Plus he didn’t know if he had the strength to hold up a book.

“I didn’t mean work stuff. Don’t you ever read anything fun? I’ll bring you the comics, you can read Charlie Brown.” Jack disappeared.

Daniel sank lower in the water and closed his eyes. He was pretty sure he could still hold up the comics, but only if he had too.

“How’re the feet?” Jack inquired when Daniel padded into the kitchen an hour later, in a long sleeved t-shirt, sweats, two pairs of socks, and the blanket.

“Still a little tingly, but warm.”

“Good. You found the hair dryer too. Excellent. Sit. Carter says you should stay off the feet and keep them elevated as much as possible for the rest of the evening. Keep the socks on when you go to bed too.”

“Sam called? She made it home in this mess?”

“I called her. She’s still in the Mountain. Guess she’s spending the weekend there, since like us she wasn’t planning to be home and has nothing in the house.” Jack ladled stew into a bowl and put it on the table in front of the archeologist, handing him utensils and a napkin. “There’s French bread if you want, or crackers.”

With a sigh, Daniel picked up the spoon, dipped it in the stew and stirred it around. “You must have gone grocery shopping while you were out.”

“I went out to do grocery shopping,” Jack corrected, pulling out a chair across from Daniel. “Put your feet up over here.” He shoved a second chair back under the table for easy access. “Come on, your feet are as important as your brain in this job. I know you don’t want to be grounded because of a little frostbite.”

Daniel reluctantly put his feet up, which left him sliding down in the chair he was sitting on. The spoon went back in the bowl, stirred some more, but never made it to his mouth. 

“Ya know, there are starving children all over the galaxy who’d be glad . . .” Jack only chuckled when Daniel glared at him. “Eat. You’re not leaving the table until you’ve finished it.”

Daniel swiped the back of his hand at the sweat trickling down his temple. “Didn’t you just say you’re not my father?”

“I’m not your mother either. At the risk of repeating myself, I am the guy you go through the Gate with, and . . .” The finger went up again. “Just a minute – you’ve also given me the privileges of being a friend. I’m exercising those now.”

Daniel slumped back in his chair. For half a second he deeply resented having given over those privileges, then reality kicked him in the ass, reminding him it had been Jack who’d taken in the homeless, destitute waif standing at the junction of two corridors without a clue as to where he should go or what he should do. Not that he’d ever considered himself a waif. He’d have figured it out eventually, but he’d been in shock and so had followed the first friendly face offering shelter; if not eagerly, at least willingly. 

Two months later he was still sleeping in the Colonel’s guest room. Jack’s argument was not only valid, it was compelling. 

Daniel began to eat. It tasted like ashes in his mouth and the smell made him nauseous, but he got it down. Sleeping pills and another half glass of wine appeared as if by magic. 

“I said I wouldn’t make you go to bed,” Jack forestalled the inevitable argument. “I made no promises about sleeping. Here’s the deal – and it’s non-negotiable - you promise you’ll make every effort to eat and sleep this weekend and I won’t tell Fraiser about your little jaunt in the snow.”

There was a moment of open disbelief before Daniel dropped his gaze to the table. Another moment passed before he carefully eased his feet to the floor, swallowed the pills, drained the wine glass, and rose, gathering up his dirty dishes. He said nothing, only deposited the items carefully in the sink, and padded, silent as a ghost, back down the hall to the guest room where he crawled back into bed.

Pushing back from the table, Jack rose wearily. Sometimes Daniel made him feel as old as their Jaffa teammate, minus any of the benefits of the snake in the gut. Without a word, the archeologist had telegraphed his distress more clearly than if he’d shouted his hurt and anger.

Jack put the dishes in the dishwasher, corked the wine and stuck it in the fridge, then had to move it in order to accommodate the pot of stew he wasn’t going to bother hunting up another container for. He started the dishwasher, made a tour of both bathrooms gathering up towels and blankets and started a load of laundry. Only when he had himself well in hand again did he go check on the linguist, figuring on suggesting they haul out the sleeping bags and sleep in the living room. 

The street lights, trapped and magnified by glistening snowflakes whirling madly beyond the windows, lit the bedroom. Daniel lay on his back, one arm over his eyes, his other hand twisted in the blankets pulled up over his chest, asleep already.

Jack crossed the room to close the blinds, chasing the odd-shaped shadows back into darkened corners. He’d rarely seen Daniel sleep so exposed, in such an open posture. The archeologist usually slept, or at least lay in bed at night, curled up as small as a six-foot human could possibly get. 

The Colonel was pulling the door partially closed when that student-of-human-nature stuff kicked in again.

There was nothing left to hide. 

Daniel had allowed him inside his most sacred space and Jack had turned it back on him with a vengeance. While there had certainly been an element of coercion in his comment about not telling Fraiser – he’d needed some kind of leverage to make Daniel take eating and sleeping seriously - he hadn’t meant to force him back into bed like an errant child.

Jack turned back. “Daniel?” It felt like the height of stupidity to wake him, but he persisted. He did not want the kid waltzing off to dreamland with yet another betrayal hanging like a guillotine over his head. 

Perching on the edge of the bed, the Colonel carefully straightened the fingers twisted in the blanket; he smoothed out the creased fabric and laid Daniel’s hand gently on top. Not even that woke the younger man, though he shifted restlessly and the arm over his eyes slid back to rest above his head. 

“Daniel?” Jack said again, softly, but with increased urgency. 

A hitched sigh and eyelids rising to half mast met this sally. “G’way,” Daniel slurred, yanking at the covers as he turned on his side, back to his C.O. “Sl’ping like you . . . wa’ted.”

“Look, I didn’t mean it that way, I’m sorry. I wasn’t using our friendship to try and coerce you into doing something you didn’t want to do. I only meant friends look out for each other.” 

Several heartbeats and a tense silence followed this assertion. 

“Remind me of that again when I’m looking out for you,” the linguist responded clearly, and pulled a pillow over his head. Unfortunately, he was too warm to stay that way very long. “Would you make up your mind,” he groused irritably, yanking at the covers again as he turned back over. “You wanted me to sleep; now you want me to wake up.”

“Sorry,” Jack repeated. “Go back to sleep.”

Daniel harrumphed and turned on his other side. Now that he was awake, half an hour after he’d fallen asleep, the bed was too hot, his feet ached, his head throbbed, and his eyes felt like someone had poured sand between his eyelids. He was miserable, and miserably aware he was miserable thanks to Jack’s intervention. Otherwise he might have slept through this lousy not-only-did-I-stupidly-get-my-feet-frostbitten, I-managed-to-give-myself-pneumonia-as-well stage of illness and woken too sick to care.

Right now, he just wanted to feign sleep long enough to lull Jack’s spidey sense so he’d be left alone again, but he couldn’t seem to lie still more than ten seconds at a stretch. He desperately wanted to shove off the covers Jack was sitting on. And then, just as desperately, he needed the socks off. 

“Move please, I have to get up.”

“You okay?” Jack rose and swept the covers back, a little surprised at how quickly the linguist popped out of bed. “Why’d you take your socks off?” he wanted to know as soon as Daniel returned from the bathroom and slumped back down on the bed.

“Because I’m hot. No.” Daniel shoved the covers back when Jack tried to pull them up over him again. “It’s too hot.” He knew he was beginning to sound like a petulant twelve-year-old; however, he was rapidly approaching the not-caring stage. 

Yes, he’d brought this on himself, but it would never have happened if Jack and Dr. Frasier hadn’t forced him to sleep. If he hadn’t slept, he wouldn’t have dreamt. If he hadn’t dreamt of his time with Sha’re, he would never have tried to out run the poignant memories. If he hadn’t been trying to out distance the pain, he would never have gone outside. And if he hadn’t been so doped up on sleeping pills and wine, he might have had a better grasp on reality and realized he was standing in the snow getting frostbitten. 

Sighing, he turned back on his side and pulled the pillow to his chest. “Sorry,” he offered in a raspy whisper. Here he was, back at the every-life-he-touched-thing again. It seemed like everywhere he went someone else suffered the consequences of his choices.

“For what?” Jack pushed the covers back against the wall and resumed his seat on the edge of the bed. 

With the blinds closed, the room was in deep shadow, only the rectangle of hall light angled in through the door, providing illumination.

“For making your life miserable as well.” 

“Is that what you really think, Dr. Jackson?” Jack wrapped both hands around a knee and leaned back, crossing the ankle over his other knee. “Because if you do, let me remind you that I wouldn’t be here now, twice over, if it wasn’t for you.”

“Like I said,” Daniel murmured, sighing. 

“It occurs to me you might have gotten the impression I wasn’t very happy with you for that.”

Jack wasn’t the only student of human nature in the room. The Air Force Colonel might have a few years on him in the age department, but the archeologist had begun studying human nature at a very tender age. “I knew you’d get over it.”

Jack waited a beat, then said quietly, “So will you.”

“It’s not the same.”

“Of course not. You’ve been cheated out of parents and a family and now a wife and another family . . . of course it’s not the same. Fodor’s doesn’t make a map of this territory for good reason. Nor will my map work for you, or Carter’s, or Teal’c’s. You’re the only one who can chart your way through this chaos.”

“Jack . . .”

“Shut up. I don’t do this often, so shut up and listen while I figure out where I’m going with this analogy.” 

“You can tell me I’ll get over this until we’re both old and gray. That doesn’t mean I get to jump ten squares and finish the game because you said so.”

“No. You’re right, life doesn’t let you cheat in this game; it is a process you have to go through. What I’m trying to tell you is I know you’ll finish the game; you will come out the other side.”

“If you have to drag me kicking and screaming the whole way?”

Jack contemplated the hot, sweaty face returning his regard. “That was obviously a mistake,” he said finally. “I don’t make very many mistakes, Daniel. I’ve spent a lot of years making life and death decisions on the spur of the moment; you’re either good at it, or you’re dead. And I’m still alive, as are the majority of the people who’ve worked with me.” 

“I’m not suicidal,” Daniel said flatly, sliding the arm back over his burning eyes.

“It took all of five minutes to realize that. I’m sorry it took that long. You just don’t fit the mold and occasionally you manage to surprise me, not to mention scare the shit out of me.”

“What mold?”

“We military types kinda tend to fit one mold or another. First and foremost, we really don’t like surprises - of any kind.”

“Are you trying to tell me nicely you’re kicking me off the team?”

“What? Where the hell did you get that idea? Oh, for cryin’ out loud. You think I’d put this much time and energy into an asset I’m going to cut loose?” Jack dropped his knee and leaned forward into the linguist’s space. Braceleting his fingers around the narrow wrist, he moved Daniel’s arm back over his head again. “Not gonna happen,” he said as the blue eyes flew open. “And now that we’ve gotten past that, will you tell me the rest of what happened while I was gone this afternoon?”

“The rest?” Daniel repeated blankly. “Oh.” He twitched a shoulder and wondered if Jack would give him hell if he skinned down to boxers. He was so hot; his clothes were weighing him down like stones in a crucible. He reached for the hem of his t-shirt, felt the bed rebound as Jack rose, and dragged it over his head, surprised at how much effort it took to accomplish the simple task. He managed to shimmy out of the sweat pants and even find a cooler spot in the bed before the Colonel strode back into the room. 

Jack handed over an open bottle of chilled water and a pair of aspirin. 

Propping himself on an elbow, Daniel took both offerings gratefully. “Thanks.”

The water was bliss in his mouth, even sliding down his throat, but sloshed around in his queasy stomach like a stormy Sea of Galilee. He thumped back down on the pillow, pressing the bottle to his neck.

“Are you going to throw it back in my face if I get you a washcloth?”

“You’re the one who woke me up to tell me sorry,” Daniel grumbled.

“True.” Jack turned and disappeared out the door again, depressing the mattress only moments later as he returned with a well wrung out, cold cloth. 

Daniel practically snatched it from him, burying his hot face in it before pulling back and rolling his head to press it to the back of his neck. “There isn’t much to tell. I just know I dreamt . . .” he paused, yanked the washcloth up and pressed it to his eyes, swallowing hard before continuing in a raspy whisper. “Something, a noise, a sound, I don’t know, something pulled me most of the way out of the dream, just not all the way. I think I got up to get a drink, or go to the bathroom, or something. I don’t know,” he repeated. “The next thing . . . I remember . . . you were dragging me inside . . . and I was freezing.” 

A long silence followed the last half-stuttered sentence. 

“I’m sorry,” Daniel said again, desperately trying to stem the combination of nerves and exhaustion trickling from the corners of his eyes. Abandoning the washcloth, he turned back on his side, hugging the pillow to him and burying his face in it. “. . . s’ry . . . ‘ly . . . happens . . . t‘me . . .‘ry . . . ‘ears . . . or so.” 

Jack plucked up the abandoned washcloth and got up to re-wet it. Easing back down on the bed, he tugged experimentally at the pillow. “Come on, I know you’re dying under that thing; trade you the pillow for the washcloth.” 

Daniel resisted for a moment, embarrassed now by his total lack of control. But the lure of the washcloth was stronger than his chagrin. 

Jack got the pillow. “I understood ‘sorry’ and maybe . . . ‘happens’ . . . out of that.”

Sighing, Daniel pressed the cold cloth to his eyes. “This usually only happens to me once every eight years or so.” He rubbed wearily at his aching temple. “I’ll try to be somewhere else if you’re still in my life eight years from now.”

“Hmm,” Jack acknowledged. “Turn over.”

Daniel lowered the washcloth. “Why?”

“Because I asked you to,” the Colonel sighed. 

The archeologist shrugged and turned over so he was facing the wall.

“I meant on your stomach,” Jack qualified. 

Daniel slid back and turned over again, shoving his arm, and the washcloth, out from under him. 

“Relax, or this will be useless,” O’Neill instructed, applying gentle pressure with both thumbs to the tense, corded muscles in Daniel’s neck. “Want me to stop?” he asked after a moment, as mounting tension rippled down the long, lean length of back.

The intimate touch had startled him. Sam had hugged him; Jack often brought him up short with a hand around the back of his neck; Dr. Fraiser’s impersonal hands had been over every inch of him; but no one had dared his personal space like this in the long two months he’d been back. His old friend the self-hug had a lot more connotations then most realized. The crossed arms worked nearly as well as posting a no-trespassing sign on his personal space. 

Daniel made a concerted effort to relax, turning his head to rest on his crossed arms. “Sorry.” He could do this, though it ratcheted up the level of trust a notch beyond where he was comfortable.

“Would you stop with the apologizing already?” Jack stilled his hands until he felt a measure of fluidity return to the taut muscles. “Consider this penance for waking you up.” 

Feeling the archeologist settle into the bed, he applied pressure again to a particularly tight knot, working it gently until the knot began to dissipate. He was a little taken back at the severity of the tension he was encountering. It was no wonder the kid hadn’t been sleeping. He hit a tender spot accidentally, causing Daniel to wince and stiffen anxiously. Jack stopped and laid his palm over the spot, applying only light pressure and the warmth of his hand. 

“Give it a minute,” he said quietly, “now that I know it’s there, I’ll be careful.” He waited until the linguist was breathing evenly again and increased the pressure of his palm, massaging with the heel of his hand. “I’ve picked up a few things over the years, but I know an excellent masseuse. He’ll come out to the house if you want, even brings his own equipment, or we can go to his studio.”

“Can’t I just pay you?”

Jack chuckled. “Sure, if you want to throw your money away.” He applied a little more pressure.

Daniel rolled his shoulder uncomfortably. “Nothing much else to do with it.” He had a brand new bank account, a shiny new, unused credit card, and a checkbook with a balance that wasn’t in the negative. 

He’d never been good with those kinds of numbers. Show him a series of angles and quadrants for any dig site and he had an instant picture of the layout in his mind; give him any pair of coordinates on a star map and he could calculate the planetary drift for the Gate address; ask him to figure the tip on the dinner check and he froze like a deer in the headlights. 

“Oww, that hurts,” he complained, though it lacked conviction.

“If you can breathe deeper for a few minutes, it will help.” 

“I don’t . . . think so,” Daniel gasped, jerking as a sharp pain stabbed at his shoulder and up into his neck.

“Breathe,” Jack ordered, feeling the knot finally loosening, “I’ve just about got it. Give it a couple seconds, Daniel. Breathe, dammit!” He smacked the linguist lightly on the back of the head. “Oh, sorry, forgot you have a headache too.”

Daniel sucked in air as he started to laugh. “Ow! That hurts like sin.” He pulled his arm under his chest, rolling his shoulder again, creating a different angle, and the knot gave way to the pressure of the insistent fingers. 

“If you think it hurts, Brother Jackson, you’re either doing it wrong . . .” Jack laid his hand back over the spot, keeping pressure on it to be sure the thing didn’t coil right back up again. “Or sin is not one of the many languages you speak.”

“Sin is a language?”

“You realize you’re just digging the hole deeper, right? Still hurt?”

“Better,” Daniel responded, though he was still breathing hard.

Jack made a mental note to call Matt. A little thing like a blizzard wouldn’t keep the masseuse at home - the man drove a Hummer for cryin’ out loud. Daniel might argue, but in the end, the Colonel was certain the kid would agree to almost anything in order to be allowed to continue traveling through the Gate.

He was careful after that, to go lightly over spots that got a hitched breath or the rolled shoulder, he’d let Matt deal with those, his objective now merely to ease the headache, and, with any luck, soothe his teammate back to sleep.

“Am I crazy?”

“Thought you were asleep,” Jack murmured.

“Nearly,” Daniel sighed, close enough a few more internal barriers were lowered. “Am I?” he asked with lethargic insistence.

“Crazy?” Jack sent questing fingers into the thick hair, found the pulse at the temple, and began to massage lightly. “I suppose to a certain extent this job requires you to be a little crazy. Why?”

“No. Already know ‘m crazy l’ke that. Cr’zy ‘cause I want to believe there’s still hope . . .” Daniel was silent so long Jack thought he had fallen asleep for sure. “Why is it my brass ring always comes at such a huge price?”

It was Jack’s turn to sigh. “If you want philosophy, I suppose everybody’s ring comes with a price. You always have to pay to play. I guess some folks don’t mind the cost.” 

“I know that. But why is it always somebody else in my life that pays?”

Jack had an answer for that, too; however, he had no intention of sharing it so soon on the heels of reacting badly to finding the archeologist in the snow. Daniel might not be suicidal, but neither did he put much value on his own life. His brass ring came at the cost of things he did hold dear. “Do me a favor?”

“Stop thinking?”

“Exactly.” It no longer surprised him when Daniel responded to something he knew damn well he hadn’t vocalized. “Look, I originally came to see if you’d rather sleep in the living room. You said you didn’t want to go back to bed. I can haul out the sleeping bags; we could sleep on the floor.”

“It’s six o’clock, Jack.”

“Yeah?”

“On Friday night.”

“Yeah, and what’s a Friday night usually like at my house?”

“Beer and hockey.”

“Bingo.”

“You do Bingo too?”

“Smartass. Come out to the sofa. I promise not to ply you with any more alcohol.”

“I don’t think so. But thanks.”

“Sure?”

“Can I hold that option in reserve?”

“Hey, you were the one said you didn’t want to go back to bed, just offering alternatives.”

“Yes, well, when I said that I wasn’t feeling quite as lousy as I do now. So thanks, but I think I’ll pass.”

“Lousy enough we should head back to the Mountain?”

“No.” 

“Daniel?” 

“Jack.” 

“It’s only going to get worse outside. If you get worse, I may have to call out the Marines.”

“It’s just a stupid cold.” He hoped. 

“Even a cold will get you grounded. If it turns into something more . . . I’m trusting you not to put yourself at risk here.”

“Thank you. Now can I go back to sleep?”

“Sure you don’t want to sleep on the couch?”

“I don’t want to sleep anywhere,” Daniel returned pointedly. 

“Right. Would it help if I said sorry again?”

“Not much.”

“Want the washcloth wet before I leave you to sleep?”

“Yes, please.”

Except the archeologist was asleep in the sixty-five seconds it took to cross the hall, rewet the cloth, wring it out, and bring it back. 

Retrieving more water, and the aspirin from the kitchen, Jack left both easily accessible on the nightstand, then hunted up Daniel’s backpack and rummaged for antihistamines to leave out just in case. Leaning down, he drew the sheet up and let it settle lightly over his sleeping teammate. Jack waited several heartbeats, then drew the comforter up as well, careful to let it drift down gently too. 

Daniel slept on undisturbed. 

_Friday night lite,_ Jack thought, as he broke out the beer, missing his companions. 

Neither the alien nor the archeologist ever paid much attention to his hockey explanations. Teal’c and symbiote didn’t imbibe, and Daniel was a mess after just one beer. Which only authenticated Jack’s surmise the archeologist had very little acquaintance with sin. But he’d gotten used to having them around on Friday nights and missed them now.

The hockey game was almost into half-time when Daniel trailed into the living room, pillow under one arm, blanket under the other, looking a lot like Linus. He slumped down on the sofa.

“Lonely?”

“It’s not Friday night without hockey.” 

“And beer.”

“Pass on the beer.”

“Water?”

“Brought it with me.” Daniel plunked the bottle on the coffee table, curled up on the sofa, bunched the pillow under his head, and dragged the blanket up over his shoulder. 

“Want some more Tylenol?”

“It’s only been an hour.”

“You look like shit.”

“Least I look better than I feel,” Daniel mumbled, only belatedly realizing he should have kept his mouth shut.

“I’m going to look for a thermometer,” Jack announced, “and then I’m calling Fraiser.”

“I’ll take some more Tylenol; I’ll go back to bed.” Daniel shoved up on an elbow. “I won’t . . .” he began plaintively, as Jack disappeared. When the Colonel didn’t reappear immediately, he sank back down, sighing, “. . . bother you.” 

He’d woken again from the recurring nightmare: thousands of pairs of glowing eyes; beautiful, slanting eyes set in the exotic face of his wife.

They had blundered out into the big, wide universe because he’d opened the Stargate. He’d acquired an unwanted wife because they’d bungled their way through a meeting with the natives on the first planet through the Gate. And a year later, his curiosity unabated, he’d lost the wife who’d become dearer to him than his own life because he’d botched a simple recon mission to the map room. 

Was it any wonder his dreams resembled M. Night Shamalyan movies?

Daniel had hauled himself into the living room hoping light and company would banish the eyes glowing in the dark corners of the bedroom. 

“Still awake?” Jack asked quietly, sitting down on the coffee table. “It occurred to me, after the third place I ransacked, I don’t own a thermometer. Then I remembered I had a couple of those strip thingies in the backpacking first aid kit.” He pulled the tabs apart to open the strip and turned it over a couple of times. Carter was in charge of this kind of stuff when they were off-world.

Daniel snaked a hand out from under the blanket, plucked it out of Jack’s fingers, and shoved out his other hand to peel off the adhesive. “You have to give it a minute,” he croaked when Jack peered at it expectantly as soon as he’d pasted it to his forehead. 

“It’s stopped going up finally,” O’Neill announced.

Daniel reached up and peeled it off. “Hundred and one; that’s not so bad.”

“Yeah, right.” Jack rose again. “Just getting the Tylenol from the bedroom. I think you can go up to 800 milligrams of this stuff before you have to worry about side effects,” he said, coming back into the living room. 

“Side effects?” Daniel took the aspirin, dry swallowing it before sinking back down to pull the blanket up again. 

“You know, like bleeding ulcers and stuff.” Jack eyed him for a long moment. “You lost a lot of fluid sweating in the tub. This fever’s going to affect that too, you really need to stay hydrated.”

‘Uhm hmm. Game’s back on.”

“I’m just saying . . .” Jack slid off the coffee table, scooping up the remote as he headed back to the recliner. Half an hour later he rose again, bringing Daniel up off the sofa like a shade rising from the newly deceased.

“I’m disturbing you.” He’d been unable to get comfortable on the sofa and knew his sighs and constant turning were probably driving his friend nuts. “I’ll go back to bed.” Daniel pulled at the blanket stuck between the cushions and the back of the couch.

“I’m going to get the sleeping bags.”

The sofa wasn’t long enough to accommodate the archeologist’s six foot frame. Throw that achy, feverish feeling driving the vain hopes of finding a comfortable position into the mix and the sofa became a nightmarish torture rack instead of a place of repose. 

Jack shoved the coffee table to the end of the room with a foot as he undid the slip knots on the first sleeping bag. He flipped it out, knelt to unzip it, and swept a hand over the new accommodations. “Can’t promise it will be much better, but at least you won’t be trying to fit a six foot body into a five foot space.”

“I can go back to bed,” Daniel said again.

“Yeah, you can, but you don’t have to.” Jack reached around to snag the second sleeping bag and rolled it out as well. He picked up the remote and switched off the TV before tossing it back in the recliner. “Come on, humor me.” 

Carter or Teal’c he would have just ordered. This one he’d learned to handle differently. Daniel didn’t consider himself part of the military establishment, despite working for it. And he worked _with_ Jack, not _for_ him. 

From Daniel’s perspective, they might work together. From Colonel O’Neill’s, the success or failure of a mission rested squarely on his shoulders. It was his command, his risk assessment, his word the three people with him acted on; ultimately, he was responsible for their lives. He knew none of his team looked at it in quite the same way. Even Carter – born and bred a military brat – would never consider him responsible for her life. 

Yet he was, because they trusted him.

Jack sat back on the second sleeping bag and crossed his arms over his drawn up knees. “I guarantee it will be more comfortable than the sofa.” 

They’d been sleeping on hard alien ground for the last two months; the plush, thickly-padded carpeting in his living room had to be more comfortable than either alien ground or the sofa at the moment.

“I probably should have stayed in the infirmary,” Daniel murmured, sliding reluctantly to his knees. “I promise I’ll get myself together and moved out soon.”

“Yeah? Where do you suppose you’d be now if you’d been in your own place this afternoon?”

“Mad,” Daniel said simply. “As in crazy,” he clarified.

“I was thinking more like frozen,” Jack retorted.

“I wasn’t thinking just this afternoon,” Daniel countered. The cold sleeping bag momentarily felt pleasant against his overheated skin. “Thanks.”

“Ah, Daniel,” Jack sighed. The archeologist challenged him on nearly every level. It wasn’t an antagonistic or resentful challenging. It was two individuals grappling with life issues from entirely different perspectives – perspectives that could compliment or confront without threatening a foundation of respect. 

Daniel slanted a questioning glance his way. He wasn’t quite as sure of O’Neill’s respect, an edge the Colonel kept well-honed as a tool of command. 

“Thanks aren’t necessary. It’s what friends do for each other.” Leaning forward over his teammate, Jack appropriated a pillow from the sofa. “Tell me about Abydos.”

HHe purposely did not look at the linguist, keeping his request as causal as possible, and non-confrontational. Tossing the pillow down at the top of the sleeping bag, he stretched out on his side, crossed his long legs at the ankles, and propped his elbow on the pillow. Cracking his neck, he settled his cheek on his palm and waited.

It was an ideology thing with Jackson; he did not do establishment, or violence, or guns. However, Daniel’s gift with languages and cultures enabled him to see and hear things differently, to intuit things even O’Neill’s keen instincts missed. It had allowed him to sow the seeds of rebellion on a foreign planet, among an alien race steeped in superstition and tradition, ruled by a parasite in a host that looked like a child and reigned by terror.

“I’ve told you about Abydos.”

“Yeah, the military things I’ve needed to know. Tell me what it was like to live on an alien planet. Tell me about the people, your family.” Jack hesitated for a moment before adding quietly, “Tell me about Sha’re . . . if you want to.”

Daniel turned his head slowly, searching the dark brown eyes. “Why?”

“Curiosity. I’ve been a lot of places, seen a lot of things, done a few too, but I’ve never lived on an alien planet, or been married to an alien.” And if it helped Daniel process some of that disturbingly bottled-up grief, all the better.

Jack had found himself, on more than one occasion, itching to order his 2IC to haul out the duct tape; especially when they were in tense situations and Daniel was still going and going . . . and going . . . like some alien Energizer bunny. It hadn’t taken him long to figure out the linguist processed out loud. Even when he thought he was alone, Daniel muttered to himself. 

In self-defense, Jack had adapted quickly, tuning out what wasn’t useful to him, while still allowing Daniel to work out brilliantly simple solutions on his way from Point A to Point B. In really tight situations, he’d learned he could nudge the linguist along with a cross-eyed look, or the looping finger. 

And Daniel had learned to shut up when O’Neill hacked a short, sharp, soundless slash across his own throat.

They weren’t perfect, this strange bunch of misfits he’d been saddled with, but they were good, and Jack was finding himself experiencing the team dynamic in ways he’d never before encountered in all of his covert ops career. 

Like passing the baton in an Olympic relay, Carter could pick up a sentence where Daniel left off. When Teal’c had their six, Jack knew they were as safe as they could possibly be. So none of them could turn invisible, or control fire, but give this team time and who knew what they might accomplish out there in the big, wide universe. After all, fourteen months ago he would never have believed one step, one single step, could take him across galaxies and star fields in the space between one heartbeat and the next. 

Privately, Jack had already christened his team the Fantastic Four. When they were in sync, they were unstoppable. 

Daniel stretched out an arm and laid his head down carefully. There were times when he could read the Colonel like a book, and times when the inscrutable face was as closed as a sandstorm-buried tomb. 

This was one of the latter. And he wasn’t really up to excavating tonight. 

He wasn’t anxious to star in a repeat performance of either of the afternoon’s comic tragedies and he didn’t know if he could speak Sha’re’s name without dissolving into tears again. So he began with Kasuf and the life of a village headman with a beautiful daughter of marriageable age, leavening what might have been just another dull, boring recital with a dollop of droll humor that surprised and amused the Colonel no end. 

If he could somehow bring out this side of Daniel in briefings, it would make those snore-worthy lectures considerably more tolerable.

Daniel’s advent upon the scene, it turned out, had saved the village head man a great deal of grief. With all the young men of the village vying for Sha’re’s attention, it had been up to Kasuf to sort them out and make a choice among them for the hand of his daughter. Not one of them had been worthy, and then to have a god fall into his lap, ripe for the picking, and not only a god worthy of his daughter, but a god who helped free them from oppression and slavery too. Kasuf’s pleasure had been rivaled only by Sha’re’s sense of injustice at being given to a man she knew nothing about.

Jack found himself chuckling often as Daniel described his acclimatization. 

In the natural social order of an agrarian society, low man on the totem always pulled the lousiest jobs, even if you were a god. And while his facility for languages had allowed him to pick up the local dialect quickly, he’d had found many of the subtle shadings of meanings difficult to distinguish. 

Daniel had suspected, in the beginning at least, his newly acquired, and not particularly tolerant, wife, had often inflected her pronunciation incorrectly just to needle him. 

Sha’re had turned him out one evening when he’d brought home mastidge dung rather than the flour she claimed she’d sent him after. He’d understood she wanted it for their fire, though for the life of him he could not understand how his obsessively neat and clean wife would tolerate the smell of burning mastidge dung. 

Kasuf had found him and forcibly hauled him back to his wife, berating a belligerent Sha’re, who not only made her feelings known to her father and husband, but half the village as well. Daniel had never again mistaken the words for flour and dung, had dutifully entertained his lovely wife with his enthusiastic, if occasionally imprudent, forays into the local culture, and eventually learned to do his share of the village chores with aplomb, if not with ease. 

What he did not say, but was as apparent to Jack as the nose on his own face, was how tirelessly he had worked to win over the villagers, and his wife, and how seamlessly he had accomplished the job given the farewell Jack had witnessed back in the Abydos Gateroom.

Daniel had literally come back through the Stargate with nothing but the clothes on his back. There’d been no time to pack, no time to gather up any sentimental pieces of his life, not even time to take leave of his father-in-law. 

His initial resistance had yielded to the carrot of ‘we’ll help you find your wife and brother-in-law’ and they’d hauled him back to the SGC. They’d taken his robes, stripping him yet again of his identity, handed him a one-size-fits-all jump suit, and shooed him out of everybody’s hair. 

There were important things to be done, life and death decisions to be made, strategies to be implemented. Dr. Jackson had been retrieved, the alien Earthling was back on terra firma, he’d been dealt with and dismissed as the useless tool he’d become. He’d no longer been an issue and therefore no longer anyone’s responsibility. 

Well, the Colonel was a sucker for waifs and orphans – hell, he had three of ‘em now on his team. 

And this one, it appeared, was winding down. 

Daniel groped for the tissue box Jack had retrieved sometime during the recital, slid up on an elbow to blow his nose, and eased his aching head back down on his arm. He was exhausted, emotionally spent, and for the first time in two long months, his mind had stopped spinning endlessly useless scenarios. 

He had tried to stem the tide of tears, swiping at them in dismay when he discovered the well was not as empty as he’d supposed.

The Colonel had reached over and once again braceleted the slender wrist, offering a quiet, “Don’t, Daniel. It’s not worth the cost of keeping it bottled up like that; trust me, I know.” 

And so he’d let them flow freely; had quit worrying when he choked over Sha’re’s name; had stopped trying to do damage control and settled for mopping up with wads of Kleenex. 

He had a scale model of the Great Pyramid in front of him now, having discovered, quite by accident, tear dampened, snotty tissues were moldable and bonded well. 

Daniel flicked dispiritedly at the topmost tissue-stone block, decapitating the pyramid. Hope was thin tonight, a wispy ground fog, easily dispersed by the prevailing winds of despair. 

When the significance of the Abydos map room had begun to percolate in his subconscious, stretching his mind nearly incomprehensibly, he’d had an inkling of the size of the known, and already mapped, universe. The inkling was now full-fledged comprehension. He had a good grasp of the incredible vastness of space they might have to cover in his quest for his family.

“We know they’re out there somewhere. We know the Goa’uld inhabiting them have every reason to keep them alive and in perfect health. We’ll find them. We’ll find them and bring them home.”

Daniel closed his burning eyes. From Jack, that little bit of reassurance created a space he could inhabit again, a space where he could live with himself, perhaps even find a measure of harmony with the universe again. Somehow, Jack had managed to pull together the ragged edges of his soul and stitch them up once more. 

And if anyone could find his family, Jack would be the one. 

 

~*~


End file.
